


Between the Shadow and the Soul

by ChasingChapters



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Eventual Romance, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Harri is a lil dark, Harry Potter & Tom Riddle Attend Hogwarts Together, Hogwarts Fifth Year, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating Might Change, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Triwizard Tournament, tom is a lot, we'll see..
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:20:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24054292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChasingChapters/pseuds/ChasingChapters
Summary: The problem growing up with nothing is that once Harri was given something of her own, she wasn’t keen to share.An outreached arm offering a palm to shake as she introduces herself, a sharing of their names, a brush of fingers, a bright burn over her ribs, the feeling of becoming whole. Harri Potter meets the eyes of Tom Riddle and thinksMine.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Harry Potter/Voldemort
Comments: 68
Kudos: 439





	1. across the ribs and under the heart

_“I love you as one loves certain obscure things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.”_

-Pablo Neruda

**\---**

This has been their secret since they were eleven, it started when Harri met a strange boy sitting in a train compartment by himself. She felt a kinship then, Harri saw the emptiness of his gaze and was met with quiet understanding as his own eyes fell upon the bruises on her skin. Two orphans sharing a train compartment, sizing the other up. A flare of recognition that they’re both the same type of creature.

_And isn’t it funny, Harri has always felt like she was alone?_

_\---_

The first gift a child is given is the mark of their soulmate. Blazed across the ribs and under the heart lies the mark of the person who belongs to you, and unless you are truly unlucky, you belong to them.

Aunt Petunia explains it rather kindly, at least for her, when Harri is old enough to understand. That the words on Harri’s ribs belong to her, and to keep her freakish mouth shut about what it says. That the words represent Harri’s soulmate, _it’s a miracle that she has one_ Aunt Petunia adds snidely, and is not to be shared with anyone else.

Harri at first finds this rather remarkable. She is not often given things, and when she is they are given under the explicit understanding that Harri does not deserve them. This is all perfectly fine with Harri, at a young age she had found out that she does not want what the Dursleys think she deserves.

She ignores her Aunt and Uncle’s scorn the best she can, and takes solace in the few things that she has been able to keep as her own.

Dudley’s discarded toy soldier she snatches up from the flower bed she was tending to, is the first something that comes into Harri’s possession. Dudley had thrown it out of the open window overlooking the garden during one of his tantrums, and Harri had brushed off the dirt and curled her fingers around it with a feeling of satisfaction. Dudley wouldn’t miss it, and this way Harri isn’t technically a thief.

A lily-white cotton sun dress that was the only article of clothing Harri has ever been given. Harri remembers Aunt Petunia’s pinched expression when she was forced to buy Harri the dress after one of the women who lived on Privet Drive looked a little too long at Harri’s oversized clothing when she had run into Petunia at the shops. Uncle Vernon had gone to work and Dudley was at a playdate, leaving Petunia no choice but to bring Harri along. When they had return home she is shoved into her cupboard, but Aunt Petunia lets her keep the dress. In the darkness of the small space the dress is still vibrantly white, Harri runs her fingers along the crisp cotton of the bottom hem with a sort of reverence. She wears it until it becomes too small, and keeps it because it is still hers, even after Dudley colors all over the white cotton with markers. 

Professor McGonagall with her in Gringotts, showing Harri the gold that was hers by birthright, to be used to buy Harri’s supplies- her very own wand! - and a snowy white owl that Harri loves immediately. From going to having nothing of her own, with no means of changing that, to being able to get anything she could possibly want leaves Harri dizzy.

It is after where Professor McGonagall takes Harri back to the Leaky Cauldron where they first entered the wizard world, and tells Hari that _James_ and _Lilly_ had loved her, and that they left this gold for her. Professor McGonagall tentatively divulges that they were murdered by a dark wizard, that there was a war where this dark wizard was defeated, and how sorry Professor McGonagall feels that her parents were casualties of this war. Harri sits quietly through this, not sure which questions to ask, she nods mutely when Professor McGonagall is finished. Seemingly to lighten the mood, the professor comments fondly how she looks like James but is a spitting image of her late grandmother, Dorea Potter neé Black, but with Lily’s luminescent green eyes.

Harri does find comfort in this. Harri’s parents had given her untamable black curls that fell down her back, and her bright green eyes that Aunt Petunia hates looking into. She looks nothing like the Dursleys and Harri feels satisfaction by this. They aren’t really her family, not in the ways that matter. Her hair, eyes, the slope of her nose, the way her olive skin tans in the sun- unlike the bright red burn of Dudley’s cheeks in the summer, have been given to her by her parents. And isn’t that another form of love? To be created in their image by the love that they had had for each other?

\---

Harri lies in her cupboard that night after Diagon Alley armed with the knowledge that her parents may not be here, but she carries them with her simply by the way she looks. She may not be loved now, but she was loved before, and so Harri decides she can be loved again.

And she knows now that there is a chance she can be loved be her soulmate as well, and that she will be theirs and they will be hers. And she feels a sense of relief because Harri has never had something truly important like this belong solely to her. She has always been alone, but her soul has laid claim on another, a person that can be with her, that can be family.

Harri traces the name _Tom Marvolo Riddle_ that is inked across her ribs, and feels a quiet sense of hope.

\---

_He’s more myself than I am._

Harri feels this thought develop in her mind, synapses firing to fully grasp her admittance. She feels it in the back of her throat, trying to escape her mouth to cut her tongue on its syllables and escape past her teeth. Harri has read this somewhere she knows, and it’s distasteful for she wants to be solely herself, but its truth resonates with her.

And it is the truth. She feels him always, especially when he isn’t really there. She tries to feel anything he gives her, pushes aside what makes her _her_ , so that there is room for him. She can’t decide if his absence from her hurts more than the fact that she is so present for him, but is unacknowledged. It feels as if Harri is on the brink of being eclipsed by him, that her own brightness will be snuffed out by his darkness. She tries to smooth away the sour tilt of her mouth at the notion, it’s not like she feels very _light_ to begin with. 

She had seen Tom go into his own compartment on the train, trailed by his minions briefly before she was ushered down and herded into her own compartment by Hermione and Ron. Harri had even seen him a few times since the term has started, in lessons or in the halls, but his name is screaming over her ribs, and the burn is becoming too much. Witches and wizards wane away if they are rejected by their soulmate, and unlike muggles, the death of a soulmate is fatal to their matching half. Much like a dementor’s kiss the body can’t withstand the absence of a soul. The necessity of their bond placates Harri slightly, she’s not being _dramatic_ in her need for him. Glances of Tom aren’t enough; she needs his touch.

Harri had went into this year knowing that it would be worse, the bond that has been dormant for the past five years is not so easily put to rest now. The beginning of sixth year is different for those who have soulmates, she knows this. It is just a sign she is reaching her magical majority, and that the bond with her soulmate would be stronger now. It is a blessing that the first four years of her time in Hogwarts she had not felt like this. Her mark had not burned incessantly, her mind did not yearn for Tom’s company. It is a respite that magic allows, it allows you to develop into a person of your own, only then to make you dependent on another.

Logically Harri knows that the bond strengthening isn’t designed this way to spite her, it is to help those who haven’t found their soulmate yet. Some people do not have the names of their other halves etched into their skin, instead ambiguous phrases that somehow relate to each other, and only by touch is it that you aware that you have met your soulmate. Those who are exceptionally powerful, and are destined to have a strong bond, have their soulmate’s names. Harri doesn’t know whether to be proud of this or not.

Harri was destined to know Tom was hers even if his name hadn’t been what linked them together, even if she had some vague phrase, they had touched each other’s hands on the train and with that they had both immediately known. Even armed with the knowledge of who her soulmate is, she can’t fight this kind of magic. The heart, soul, and mind are the three components that are connected by a soul bond. His name on her ribs feels like it can burn into her heart, and although he distances himself from her in her, she can always feel him in her soul. Even when she screams for him in the place he should be in her mind, and she gets no response, she can feel him in her soul.

The mere sight of him isn’t enough anymore; not with him withholding himself from her mind, preventing her to feel his. Harri wishes the bond could be as easily managed as it was in the past. In first year they were inseparable, he was all she really had and as an unknown muggleborn in Slytherin she was all Tom had too. Tom’s name did not sting as much back then, but Tom came to her one day in the library with wide eyes, and like a secret he tells Harri that he can talk to snakes, which Harri already knew, _but doesn’t Harri understand?_ Tom can talk to _snakes_.

After their first year, Tom had separated himself from her publicly, and had fully entrenched himself in the dynamics of the Slytherin house.

 _Rather successfully_ Harri thinks with spite.

This had made Harri into her own person, where she had made her own friends in her own house, and had to cull her weakness for him as best she could. Harri likes to believe she understands that he needs to make a name for himself without her. _His enemies could use her against him_ , Tom had said when he first started to pull away, _the bond has to be a secret until he can protect her properly._ Tom has always been a little off, Harri is resigned that the bond doesn’t affect him like it does her. Harri tries not to feel hurt by that fact.

But she still pulls herself together after his abandonment, and if sometimes she has to repeatedly trace the letters of his name on her skin to soothe her to sleep, it’s no one’s business but her own.

\---

After Dumbledore had declared that the Triwizard Tournament would be reinstated and Hogwarts would be hosting at the start of term feast, the school has been swept into a frenzy, and Harri’s stubborn avoidance has prevented her from gaging Tom’s reaction to the whole thing.

Harri wouldn’t be able to participate due to being under the required age of seventeen, but she wouldn’t put her name in even if she were allowed to. Eternal glory isn’t something she’s interested in, especially with the stakes of the tournament being so high. She doesn’t think Tom would even allow her to put her name in the goblet if she wanted to.

Whether Harri is bitter or not because she thinks that is due to his own self-preservation and his lack of faith in her skills she doesn’t linger on.

But Tom on the other hand must be slightly disappointed at this opportunity lost. It seems like something he would jump at given the chance, regardless of the dangers he may face. Tom has always believed that he was untouchable.

It has been a whole summer, and three days since the start of term, and Harri is proud of herself for holding out from speaking to him, but she wishes she could prolong her forfeiture a bit longer.

Harri does not like admitting when she has lost; doesn’t believe defeat should ever be something for her to accept graciously. Her tenaciousness is what landed her in Gryffindor and her ability to plot and plan is what almost got her put into Slytherin. She wishes she could put this off for a few more days to prove to herself, and to him, that she _doesn’t need him,_ but this is an unstoppable force and she is not an unmovable object. Harri has lost this little game they play, now it is time to concede her defeat. 

Before she can reach out to him, easier than dragging her eyes up to find him where she knows he’s holding court in the middle of the Slytherin table, she’s interrupted from her introspective thoughts.

“Are you alright Harri? You’ve been quiet all dinner,” Hermione softly says from where she’s sitting next to Harri.

Harri appreciates Hermione despite what Tom has said about her. Her brown eyes are always filled with warmth, and it’s refreshing to have a friend that gives her such easy concern. Hermione is also discrete. Harri appreciates that as well.

“I’m fine. Just a headache,” Harri looks up from where she’s been staring at her dinner plate blankly to flash Hermione a quick smile hoping it reaches her eyes. Hermione doesn’t look convinced.

Hermione’s brown eyes narrow as she purses her lips. Her hair is tied back or it’d be crazier than Hari’s. She opens her mouth appearing as if she’s about to needle at her, and Harri quickly shifts her eyes back to her plate, bracing herself for Hermione to ask more questions.

She feels Hermione sigh deeply next to her, “Well if it continues go to Madame Pomfrey after dinner,” Hermione seems resigned with Harri’s excuse, and Harri wants to feel guilty, but she’s relieved.

Harri can barely think over the burning of her mark.

Harri nudges her shoulder lightly against Hermione’s in thanks, grateful to Hermione for letting it go for now. Ron has been oblivious to the entire exchange, sitting across from her gesturing wildly with his spoon depicting a quidditch move to Seamus. No one has noticed, again Hermione knows when to be discrete.

Harri recognizes that her behavior the past couple of days has been withdrawn. She feels like she’s floating through the halls and has been barely present in lessons. Harri is lucky that the term has just started, she can’t afford to be distracted by _him_ in the lessons they don’t share together as well as the lessons they do share.

She has become very good at avoiding looking in Tom Riddle’s direction in class. Harri has had years to practice.

But she thinks that if anyone looks at her for too long and too deeply they will see that she’s burning alive inside. And the way she has been trying to compartmentalize his absence isn’t working like it was over the summer. It’s like her soul can feel his proximity and demands to be acknowledged by him.

Harri can feel the absence of Tom in her mind. She imagines trying to speak to him there as standing at the bluff of a cliff, toes hanging off the edge, screaming into the black abyss where she can’t see the bottom. If she’s lucky his rare response drifts up like a warm breeze, but most of the time she is met with the cold indifference of emptiness.

Harri never thinks to stop gazing into the abyss and step away from the cliff edge.

Finally surrendering to her urge, Harri looks up and scans the Slytherin table. She catches sight of him from across the Great Hall easily, as if her eyes were magnetized to his form. A glimpse of his profile in a sea of green, pale skin and a dark haired head turned, appearing to be in a discussion with someone- Malfoy, either Draco or Abraxas, she isn’t close enough to tell. She can only make out the straight line of his nose from here. He disappears from her view as quickly as he appeared, lost in the rows of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw students separating them.

Harri quickly shifts her gaze back down when she realizes she has been staring a little too long in his direction.

Harri is certain Tom hasn’t looked at her once this entire time, even when the tournament had been announced, even during the classes they have shared together. Harri knows better than to be hurt, but she still can’t quite shake the feeling. She couldn’t handle his gaze boring into her right now anyway, even though he so rarely looks at her at all in public.

Tom doesn’t seem like he should be a part of this, like he doesn’t even belong at that table let alone in her thoughts. It is painful to come to that conclusion, but she can’t help it. When she thinks of him it feels as if her head will explode. When she tries to not think of him, it feels as if her heart will stop beating.

Glaring into her mashed potatoes she had been pushing around her plate idly, irritated at her own dramatics, she resolves herself to defeat. Harri finds the chasm in her mind from where he holds himself away from her, feeling as she is screaming into the gaping maw of his absence, and pushes _I need to speak to you_ into the darkness she has always associated with him.

\---

The soaring hope and joy she feels that day on the train- the fact that she, the freak, had a soulmate. This quiet boy with serious eyes was the _Tom Marvolo Riddle_ that had always been a part of her. When Tom pulled the drapes on the windows of the train compartment, and jerkily untucks his shirt to show _Harri Dorea Potter_ on his own ribs that stick out a little too much, just like hers.

That is when Harri Potter falls in love with Tom Riddle. That is her first mistake.


	2. you get what you need

“We’ve almost become two spirits side by side. We’ve almost become two ghosts to one another, wrestling.” –D.H. Lawrence

\---

Harri is in the library working on her essay for Transfiguration, when he finds her. OWLS are at the end of this year, and McGonagall hadn’t wasted anytime assigning them work. 

Harri had been proud of her secret library room when she had found it first year. She had shown Tom and even he had been grudgingly impressed. She’s not sure if people know about it, it isn’t easy to find, and requires stroking the spine of a specific book, tucked away on a shelf in a forgotten corner in the back of the library.

She is fully focused on her essay, a small lantern illuminating her work and the soft scratching of her quill filling the small space, when a cool hand is placed at the back of her neck. Fingers lightly grasp along the side of her throat one at a time.

Harri startles and tries to suppress a flinch. She hadn’t even heard him come in to the small and secret room, she wonders how long he had been standing behind her. She now suppresses a shudder.

Harri didn’t think he’d bother to find her here, she imagined him cornering her in an empty hallway, like the few times he’s sought her out on his own, a brief touch to her wrist to pull her into whatever shadowed alcove he deemed was appropriate for their conversation. Hence her surprise at him popping up now. He never likes it when she summons him to her, even when his mark has to be burning as much as hers has been.

Tom has always had more self-control.

“You startled me, I could have hexed you.” Harri’s tone is hushed, even though they’re alone. Habits are hard to break in a library.

He remains behind her, slightly squeezing the back of her neck, so close to her that the front of his robes brushes against her back.

“Don’t lie. You could never hex me,” he murmurs bemusedly, dragging his hand off her neck and stepping away from the back of her chair. She notices he says ‘could’ rather than ‘would’.

Harri itches to prove Tom how wrong he is.

“You needed to speak to me.” He comes around from lurking behind her, into her line of sight.

Tom has gotten more handsome over the summer. Harri finds this unfair because he was already too good looking to begin with, and he has always been aware of exactly how good looking he is. Sharp jawline, artfully combed dark brown hair, his deep eyes that appear black, piercing into her as he towers over her.

Tom kicks out the chair that’s next to her and sits. This time placing his one hand firmly on the back of her neck, and putting his elbow on the table to rest his chin on his other palm, so that he can look at her while also appearing that he is giving her his singular attention. Harri looks back down at her essay, words blurring together on the parchment.

_He’s feeling playful tonight then._

Her mind is calm in his presence, her head no longer pounding from his absence. Her mark is pleasantly tingling over her ribs. Harri can’t find it in herself to shake off his touch right now. She’ll adequately hate herself over the relief she feels because of him later, when she’s alone and doesn’t have to control her facial expressions.

Harri says nothing.

She darts her eyes over to look at him, and finds him staring intently at the side of her face. Apparently Tom is prepared to wait her out.

She feels weak having to ask for him like this. Tom is greedy and cruel and Harri is the only one who knows what kind of creature he is. Harri expects that Tom must be himself around her because he knows it would be futile to pretend. They are bound to each other for the rest of their lives, why bother with a facade?

Harri liked to think that she had outgrown the helplessness she had felt as a young girl, bullied by the Dursleys and the lack of hope in her situation, but Tom could always bring that feeling to the surface again.

His regard cuts, but his attention is better than his ambivalence. The lack of burning of her mark at the moment is a reward for this pseudo cruelty he is imposing on her. Even when Tom is giving, he is cruel.

_Cruelty she had asked for_ , she reminds herself.

She deeply sighs and puts down her quill to face him, squaring her shoulders, preparing for whatever this conversation is about to become. His pale hand falls from her neck, smoothing along the top of her shoulder and then falling down to gracefully rest on the table.

Tom seems to find Harri amusing, and leans back comfortably in his chair, flashing her a razor sharp smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“How was your summer?”

Harri sighs again.

“It was fine,” she responds shortly. Harri isn’t feeling very friendly at the moment, and she is definitely not in the mood for whatever game Tom wants to play at the moment. Like they are two Hogwart’s students, catching up after a long summer.

Yes, she asked to speak with him, but that was two days ago, and how _typical_ it was that Tom Riddle takes his time to find her, just to act like they’re overdue for a simple catch up. Just so that he can prove a point.

“And those filthy muggles? They left you alone, yes?”

Of course Tom has to insult the Dursleys, he has despised them ever since Harri told him that her room was a cupboard under the stairs in first year. Harri knows that Tom would have hated the Dursleys even if they had loved her, perhaps he would have hated them more than he does now if they had.

Harri rolls her eyes, “Yes Tom, the Dursleys left me alone. I don’t need to talk to you about them or my summer.”

She debates bringing up the fact that their bond is so much stronger since her birthday this summer, at least on her side, but Tom turned fifteen before her and seems like nothing has changed on his end, so Harri decides to bring up something not as mortifying to discuss as that.

Harri used to think that they would belong to each other, now she knows better. Tom doesn’t like the feeling of ownership unless he is the one owning.

“I’m concerned with the arrival of Durmstrang next week.” She chokes out, turning her head to look back down at her transfiguration essay. It is better to just blurt out her insecurities before Tom smells blood.

It’s silent a moment, like Tom didn’t expect her to say that, before he hums and sits up straighter.

She doesn’t know what he expected that she wanted to talk about.

“You’re scared of Durmstrang coming here because Grindelwald is an alumnus?” he asks slightly mocking.

“No, I’m _concerned_ ,” she emphasizes snidely, “that there will be Durmstrang students that support Grindelwald coming to Hogwarts, finding out that I am the blood traitor Potter orphan, and fixating on me.”

Harri says this all a bit too rushed.

Harri’s parents were rather notoriously murdered by Grindelwald in the Great War before he was defeated by Dumbledore and imprisoned in Nurmengard. Her father was one of the greatest duelers for the light, recruited by Dumbledore himself, but was cut down in battle. It took her mother two days to die according to what she has been told. They were soulmates.

Her parent’s tragic story is rather infamous. A devastating blow to the light, a young accomplished heir to a noble house, and his brilliant- _muggleborn_ -wife reduced to casualties of war.

Harri likes to think her mother was more than just James Potter’s wife.

She tried explaining to Tom one late night in first year, how she thinks she misses them. That she had a family and it was taken from her. Tom was quiet, listening, until he said she couldn’t miss something she can’t remember.

Harri doesn’t bring up her parents to him again.

The thought that students of the families who were on the other side, that found Harri’s parent’s death as a victory, as something to be proud of even in their defeat, were coming to Hogwarts was unsettling to her.

“I’m sure some of the students arriving will be Grindelwald supporters, but as Grindelwald is currently imprisoned in Nurmengard, there is nothing they can really do, and therefore nothing for you to really be _concerned_ over,” Tom says with false patience.

“I can see it very likely that Grindelwald’s supporters wouldn’t mind tying up loose ends, and how it would be satisfying to target me as well.” 

“At least half of my house supports Grindelwald. There hasn’t been an attempt on your life yet.” Tom says this like he finds it funny, like the concept of her as some spoil of war is funny.

“Well yes, but that’s because it is _your_ house. I’m sure they can hate me all they want, but you wouldn’t let them actually do anything.”

Tom’s claim to the Slytherin lineage is uncontested. Harri was the first person he told when he discovered that he was _great_ , and that speaking to snakes meant something more than he realized. (At the time Harri had already thought Tom was great, she didn’t need him to be related to some old man that founded Hogwarts.)

Tom smiles at her for that and then shifts his gaze away from her and to the book shelf in front of him, thinking deeply.

“You’ll be fine,” Is what he settles on.

_Tom sure knows how to reassure_ Harri thinks resignedly. She knew what to expect when she reached out to him.

“Anyways, regardless of your _concern_ with the arrival of Durmstrang, I’m glad the monotony of the school year is broken. The tournament should make for some entertainment.” Tom says casually, finally turning to study her again.

Harri felt last year her Hogwarts experience was anything but monotonous.

Last year’s debacle; finding out Sirius Black was not actually a Grindelwald supporter trying to kill her, but actually her godfather, and that Ron’s beloved rat Scabbers was actually Peter Pettigrew, the man who had once been Harri’s dad’s friend until he switched to Grindelwald’s side and betrayed them. In the chaos of the situation, Professor Lupin had turned into a werewolf, Pettigrew had escaped, and Sirius had to go back on the run. This had all been exciting enough for her.

Tom had been furious. Especially since she had done all of this without him knowing. Harri had been quite pleased with her ability to keep it from him at the time, even if the situation had escalated rather quickly.

Tom is looking at her with narrowed eyes now, seemingly on the same train of thought and daring Harri to bring it up.

_Still angry with her over that then_.

That was the only time Tom had gotten so mad at her he completely shut her away from him. Even if his presence in her mind is a sharp cliff face dropping into darkness at the best of times, the solid wall he erected between them was worse than any feeling or lack of feeling he had given her in the past.

For the remainder of term and halfway into summer he was absent from her, until he finally cracked and responded to one of her owls, seemingly letting it go without further discussion.

Harri decided to keep the conversation firmly on the tournament.

“I mean if you find a tournament placing teenagers against each other with the threat of death entertaining, then sure. I don’t see the appeal in eternal glory, especially in a glorified teenage death match.” Harri states rather matter-of-factly, fiddling with her quill so she doesn’t have to meet his gaze.

“You wouldn’t would you,” Tom comments wryly.

Feeling reckless, Harri meets his eyes, “So you’re not disappointed that you won’t get a chance to compete? Go up against the brightest Durmstrang and Beauxbaton have to offer?”

Tom flashes her one of his polite Prefect Smiles™, the one he uses when helping lost first years, and says demurely, “If the tournament allowed fifth years, and if I were able to enter, I wouldn’t. I have much more important things to focus on than some silly little tournament, like studying for OWLs.”

Right, because Tom is studying for his OWLs.

Harri nearly snorts, _so he is disappointed that he can’t enter_. Harri finds it rather funny; Tom Riddle being told he can’t do something he wants to do.

Appearing to be over their conversation Tom flicks his wand, casting a silent tempus, looking at the time as he starts to stand.

“Where are you going?”

Harri could pinch herself for asking. She sounds like she cares that he’s leaving, like she’ll miss him. She hates to admit, even to herself, she was enjoying his company, and not just because her head stopped aching and her mark stopped burning in his presence.

Tom smirks, eyes lighting up due to her mortification he probably feels burning through her at the moment, “I told Abraxas I’d meet with him soon.”

Not explaining any further, he stands up to his full height, looming over her from where she’s still sitting gazing up at him. He gently tugs on one of her curls that is framing her face, pulling it straight before releasing it to spring back up towards her head as his eyes flash with some inscrutable emotion.

“Don’t miss me too much,” He says cheekily, winking at her before turning and tickling the spine of _Sonnets of a Sorcerer_ and disappearing through the passage that opens to exit into the main library.

Harri thinks she hates him sometimes.

\---

They’re in Potions the next time she sees Tom, which she had expected and prepared for, since Griffyndors had Potions with Slytherin since first year.

As much as Harri dislikes having to go to Tom for relief, his insufferableness seems to be worth it. Tom’s touch in the library has calmed her mark and has left her relatively clear minded for Potions. Which Harri is quite thankful for because Slughorn is exuberant at best, and insufferable at worst. Today he has been just annoying.

And as annoying as Slughorn can be, Potions is loads better now that Snape doesn’t teach it anymore. Harri had even got an ‘O’ on her essay of the multiple uses of lacewing flies.

Harri’s success in Potions is tempered by the fact that Snape finally achieved his long held ambition of becoming the DADA professor after Merrythought retired in Harri’s third year. Harri is still top of her class in Defense, despite Snape’s best efforts.

She is mindlessly crushing beetle eyes with the flat of her small blade while Hermione continuously stirs their potion with intense focus. It’s muggy in the classroom today, Harri and Hermione both have their hair back, although Hermione’s appears as if its moments away from springing out the haphazard bun she tied it into.

Harri feels a drop of sweat slide down her spine, and thinks her hair must not look any better.

“Psst, Potter.” a voice cuts through the low murmur of the class and the sound of students preparing ingredients, breaking Harri’s train of thought.

She knows who’s calling for her attention before she even turns around. Maybe if she ignores him he’ll give up and leave her to suffer in this heat in silence.

“ _Potter!_ ” The voice says with more urgency.

From next to her in the midst of counting clockwise or counterclockwise stirs, Harri isn’t sure what step they’re on at the moment, Hermione mutters, “You better see what he wants before he starts shouting, I’m trying to focus.”

Thinking Hermione is probably right, Harri resignedly turns and finds Blaise Zabini grinning at her from his table back a row and across the aisle from her. His partner, Nott, is on the other side of him with a sour look on his face, seemingly ignoring him and simultaneously disapproving of what Blaise is doing, stirring their potion with half the vigor Hermione has been stirring.

“You look exceptionally nice today Miss Potter. I have to say, your green eyes appear to be more luminous than usual,” Blaise whispers all of this with a shit eating grin stretched across his admittedly handsome face.

Zabini usually comments on her luminous eyes, or voluminous _perfect_ hair.

Harri smiles back just as sweetly, “It must be all the potion fumes you’re inhaling Zabini, they’re the same color they always are.”

Blaise’s grin gets wider at her response and looks like he’s going to continue before Nott sharply elbows him in the ribs. Blaise scowls and turns to him, where they proceed to have a hushed conversation.

Harri wouldn’t go as far as to say she _likes_ Blaise Zabini, but she finds his antics amusing. Ever since third year when he sent her a particularly horrible singing dwarf valentine, he has ‘flirted’ with her any chance he got. (Fred and George wouldn’t stop singing ‘ _her eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad’_ every time they saw her for a week- Harri learned not to react.)

It’s become a bit of a running joke, and Harri doesn’t think Zabini really has a crush, he does this rather for his own amusement, so Harri either ignores him or fires back an appropriately sarcastic response.

She just appreciates that Blaise doesn’t take himself too seriously, unlike the other Slytherins that either pretend she doesn’t exist or look down their nose at her.

Speaking of other Slytherins, her ribs give a sharp pinch like she’s been jabbed in the side by a quill. And as annoyed Hermione probably is at Harri’s distraction, she knows it wasn’t from her. Harri sucks in a breath and shoots a glance to where she knows Tom is sitting in the front of the classroom, his back to her.

He’s quietly in conversation with Draco Malfoy, stirring their potion as Malfoy is turned to him saying something, they’re too far away for Harri to hear anything. Draco looks almost identical to his older brother Abraxas, the same blindingly platinum hair and ice blue eyes, except with pointier features. Abraxas is only a year older than Draco, but often acts like his father, which is appropriate because Draco often acts like a child.

Ever since Draco had called Hermione a mudblood in first year and Harri had hit him with a particularly nasty hex, Harri and Draco have hated each other. Tom has Draco on a short leash so they usually just glare at each other when they cross paths in the hallways. He hadn’t called Hermione a mudblood since then, which Harri was rather smug about.

Hermione, apparently fed up with Harri’s inattention, snaps “Harri I can’t crush the beetle’s eyes and simultaneously keep stirring our potion. There’s only twenty-three more clockwise stirs before we need to add the eyes.”

Guiltily Harri drags her eyes away from where she was staring at Tom and Malfoy, and quickly apologizes to Hermione, going back to crushing the small black eyes on her work table in front of her.

\---

It’s the night of the unveiling of the Triwizard cup, Durmstrang and Beauxbaton had arrived that afternoon, causing the entire school into a frenzy. Harri hadn’t gone with Ron to watch their arrival, her stomach had been in knots all afternoon.

Harri is absentmindedly scratching her mark while listening to Ron and Seamus seriously discussing which school will bring the prettiest girls from where they’re sitting next to her.

“They’re _French_ Seamus. French girls. The fact that you’re even arguing with me about this is mad.” Ron says very passionately with a bite of Shephard’s pie still in his mouth.

Ginny snorts from where she’s sitting across from Ron, next to Dean.

Hermione is very obviously not listening, nose deep in her Arithmancy textbook on the other side of Harri.

Harri cracks a smile, “You never know Ron, Durmstrang might have some cute girls too,” Harri is trying to lighten her own nervousness with humor.

“You wouldn’t get it Harri. _French girls._ Also any girl from Durmstrang is evil and not to be trusted. I don’t know whose idea it was to invite the school Grindelwald was expelled from, but even I know that’s a bad idea.”

There goes Harri not being nervous.

Ron’s comment seems to grab Hermione’s attention where she lifts her head, glances at the expression on Harri’s face, and leans over the table to look at Ron.

“That’s ridiculous Ron. A whole school isn’t going to be evil just because the Dark Lord attended it years ago. We mustn’t stereotype, this competition is for fostering international bonds and creating diplomacy that we can- ”

“Yes that’s all very good isn’t it, but there has to be _some_ supporters of Grindelwald still at Durmstrang. Just ‘cuz he’s locked up doesn’t mean all the people who liked him are too.” Dean interjects from across the table, rather unhelpfully.

Hermione opens her mouth to address Dean scathingly, before she’s cut off by Dumbledore standing from the head table. He holds his wand to his throat to be heard over the roar of the Great Hall.

“Your attention please,” His voice rings out loudly, causing the roar to fade into silence.

Harri’s stomach clenches as Dumbledore’s voice fades due to her inattention. Durmstrang students and staff will walk through the doors of the Great Hall at any second, and she’s apprehensive over the possibilities of confrontation.

Harri knows nothing is going to happen, she knows this, so why does she have this feeling in the pit of her stomach?

Everyone in Hogwarts treats Harri normally, she wasn’t the only person who had lost parents due to Grindelwald. As she glances at Neville sitting a few people down the dining table, she notices his face is pale and absent of excitement unlike their peers.

Last year was enough for Harri, and seeing as she doesn’t have any more Azkaban escapee godfathers, this year should be filled only with the excitement of watching others compete in a tournament and risk their lives.

Harri thinks back on her talk with Tom, the back of her mind where he belongs is emanating a cool and still calmness. She wonders if that’s for her benefit.

Dumbledore seemingly wrapping up his speech, and the hum of excitement that permeates the hall, brings Harri’s attention back to him to catch his closing remarks.

“I am sure all of you are anxiously waiting to meet our new friends, and would love an old man to stop his blathering, so without further ado, I first welcome the students and staff of the Durmstrang Institute.”

At these words, the doors of the Great Hall swing open, a sea of red uniforms and unsmiling faces are revealed, and proceed to uniformly march into the hall.

_A relaxing year_ , Harri reassures herself again, _just ignore them and you’ll be fine._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol that’s cute Harri.
> 
> I want to thank everyone who took the time to kudos, comment, and bookmark! I really appreciate it and it seems that I am susceptible to positive reinforcement so keep it up *wink wink*. 
> 
> A little insight to Harri and Tom’s dynamic. Tom is a smug asshole and Harri is pretty much annoyed by him at all times until she starts feeling angsty. Blaise is a shithead and knows exactly what he’s doing, even if Harri doesn’t.
> 
> We’re heating up folks.

**Author's Note:**

> So. Here we go. TriWiz tourney happening in 5th year bc I do what I want. Years 1-4 are chill compared to canon, and there will be some flashbacks of that time, but this takes place in 5th year.  
> Starts a little angsty but Harri will lighten up... eventually.
> 
> Find me on tumblr, name is chasingchaptersao3


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